President Donald Trump has pardoned a long list of political allies accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Ed Martin, the government’s pardon attorney, posted a copy of the pardon proclamation on social media early Monday and a list of those who are covered by it. Among those on the list is Sidney Powell, a Dallas attorney and former key member of Trump’s legal team.
Powell did not immediately respond to a message sent through her website or phone call Monday morning.
Who is Sidney Powell?
In 2020, Powell emerged as one of the most vocal Trump allies pushing baseless conspiracy theories that the election was rigged. At a news conference with Rudy Giuliani, who led the legal effort, Powell blamed Cuba, Venezuela, the Clinton Foundation, billionaire investor George Soros and Antifa for rigging the election.
Political Points
Trump’s legal team dropped Powell soon after. One Trump campaign official told The Washington Post that Powell “was too crazy even for the president.”
In 2023, Powell was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering law. An indictment accused Powell of tampering with voting machines in a rural Georgia county and stealing data from a voting machine company.
Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties. As part of a deal, she is serving six years of probation, was fined $6,000 and was required to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also agreed to testify against her co-defendants at future trials.
Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, so it has no effect on the Georgia case. None of the people pardoned were charged in federal cases over the 2020 election.
FILE – Sidney Powell (right) and former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, as members of President Donald Trump’s legal team, speak during a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters on Nov. 19, 2020, in Washington.
Jacquelyn Martin / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Texas connections
Powell has been licensed to practice law in Texas since 1978. She is originally from North Carolina but she served as an assistant U.S. attorney and appellate section chief in the Western and Northern Districts of Texas.
In Western Texas, Powell was a prosecutor in the trial of American drug trafficker Jimmy Chagra for criminal enterprise violations. Among other crimes, Chagra was implicated in the 1979 assassination of U.S. District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio.
Powell established her law firm in Dallas in 1993, focusing on high-profile cases, including defending white-collar executives in the fallout from the collapse of Enron.
In recent years, she attracted a following in conservative circles as she criticized as federal overreach in law enforcement. Her star turn came when she defended Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. but later sought to withdraw his plea.
Since 2020, Powell has twice defeated efforts by the State Bar of Texas to discipline her over her conduct following the election.
After a hearing in January in which the state’s Board of Disciplinary Appeals found in her favor, Powell told Bloomberg Law that the bar’s attempt to discipline her “is the epitome of lawfare that shouldn’t be allowed in this country.”
“For the bar that I’ve devoted more than 45 years of practice to to come against me nonstop for four years now is extremely disheartening and painful and it’s been very expensive and time consuming and unjust,” she told the news outlet.
Powell also said her legal problems crippled her once-successful law practice.
“Nobody’s calling someone who has been besieged as I’ve been,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.